2025 r/Fantasy Bingo First Impressions

Another April, another bingo! Life has been fairly busy for me (turns out buying a 100 year house means lots of projects) so reading time has been a bit more scarce. That said, bingo is an excuse to recharge my reading life and give myself some new direction.

Bingo is simple. Over the course of a single year, you are challenged to meet 25 challenges. Most will be filled by reading a book. You can’t repeat authors, and you only get 1 reread. That’s … pretty much it to be honest. To learn more about bingo, here is the official post for this year’s bingo card.

The first few years I did bingo, my goal was to complete a card. I was building back to my pre-college reading habits, which was a challenge on its own. After that, I started imposing extra limits and challenges. Last year I imposed a ‘published in 2024’ limitation, to try and read books currently releasing. I loved that, and found at least one new all time favorite in Welcome to Forever.

This year I’ll be doing an all-Achillean card! Each book must feature a queer male protagonist who is romantically or physically interested in other men. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding non-romance focused works (though I do love a romance) but have also put off some commonly-recommended achillean fantasy books. This year is the time to tackle that project, and hopefully add at least a few more to my favorites.

With that, let’s take a look at this year’s card!

First thoughts are that this card is adding some really interesting squares for me. High Fashion in particular is exciting. My mom handweaves, and I love reading about lush descriptions of clothing. Not a Book has lots of fun options. I’ll probably end up playing a video game, but I may try to convince my tabletop roleplaying group to try out a new system.

Of course, a lot of these squares are regulars: Self-Published, Book Club, Author of Color, and Five Short Stories are all standard at this point. Others, such as Generic Title, Knights/Paladins, and Published in the 80s fit into a pretty common theme.

This card does seem slanted towards fantasy over sci-fi or horror. Elves, Knights, and Gods all feel like they’ll skew towards Fantasy pretty strongly, with Pirates and High Fashion also making me think Fantasy immediately, even though the reality is a lot less limiting. By comparison, Biopunk is the only explicitly Sci-Fi adjacent square. This isn’t a problem (I tend to prefer Fantasy on the whole anyways) but interesting.

Easy Squares – These are the ones that I have no worries about reading, either because I’ll stumble upon them naturally, or because I already have something in mind that I want to tackle for it.

• LGBTQIA Protagonist – considering all my books will be queer, this is effectively a free space
• Published in the 80s – Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner and Magic’s Pawn by Mercedes Lackey have both been on my list for a while. A perfect excuse to read them!
• Down with the System – revolutions aren’t’ exactly are in speculative fiction
• A Book in Parts – no idea what this will be, but it’s a common enough choice that I think I’ll stumble upon it naturally
• Published in 2025 – I already have several on my list to read
• Elves and Dwarves – The newest Cemetaries of Amalo book already released and is on my bookshelf!
• Recycle a Bingo Square – is basically a free space. The lazy part of me wants to just slot in a book I loved but doesn’t fit elsewhere, but I may pick a square that excited me and see what I can match it with
• Author of Color – Lots of great options on my TBR already. It’s not quite a free space, but it’s fairly close to it
• Biopunk – A Drop of Corruption is going to be a common choice for this square, and it convienently fits my bingo card! Loved the first book in the series, and am very excited for the sequel.

Squares I’m Worried About – these are the ones that I think are going to take some concerted effort to find. I’m probably not just going to stumble upon them.

• Generic Title – Ironically, I don’t read a lot of books with generic titles. The square description gives a lot of buzzwords that it must include at least one of (court, shadows, bone, etc etc). A quick search of my tbr didn’t turn up any obvious options, but I easily could have missed one.
• Not a Book – it should be easy! But nothing immediately springs to mind that I have already watched, and I’m not in tune enough with video games/rpgs to know explicitly gay ones. There is Thirsty Sword Lesbians if I were doing a queer card though. Things are out there, but I’ll need to look for it.
• Five Short Stories – traditionally I’ve read an anthology for this, but most anthologies are of queer stories, not gay ones in particular. I may just find five random short stories though.
• Epistolary – I’ve already read the obvious option (Choir of Lies). If I don’t stumble upon one, I may use it as a reread.

What I’ll Be Reading
Who knows! Well, I know some of what I’ll read. However, I’m not going to may out all my options like I have in the past. I want this to be a little more freeform and open ended than my bingos of the past. I don’t need to finish it by August, despite what my asshole brian thinks. That said, here are the ones that are already on my mind

• A Fractured Infinity by Nathan Tavares – Welcome to Forever was my favorite book of last year’s card, and I’ve been saving this to be my first read of this card. I started on April 1st and am almost done!
• Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner – Another book I’ve been sitting on until bingo started. I loved the sequel (I know, I know) and have high hopes for this book. If its a dud, I’ll go with Magic’s Pawn, and may read hat anyways.
• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennet – murder mysteries! Leviathans! Biopunk! I was going to read it anyways, but this way it counts!
• Something by Tobias Begley. I loved Journals of Evander Tailor, but was a bit sour on the second Mana Mirror book. That said, this is a self-published author with good output of queer work, and I want to support him.

How will I feel next March? Probably that I missed opportunities to read a bunch of good stuff. At this point though, I don’t care. I’m going to read some gay shit and have a great time. Have suggestions for any of these squares? Send me a message!